‘Frenchify the table'
Among the cultural habits deemed essential to the re-forging of Frenchness in the colony, culinary practices are singled out as the most fundamental ones. Authors of the promotional literature often preached the importance of keeping an all-French diet.
For example, Gaston Valran, one of the most active campaigners for colonial female emigration, urged the would-be coloniale to franciser la table (Frenchify the table) as a means to refortify the body weakened by an exotic diet.45 But it is in Le confort aux colonies that one would find the most elaborate advice on how to Frenchify the table. Its co-authors contended that it was highly feasible to prepare French food using products in the colony, which could be supplemented with the produce and meat from one’s own vegetable garden and farmyard. As illustrations, they provided readers with recipes on how to prepare French dishes in the colony. They also advised that except for breakfast, which was more copious in the colony than back home, the menu for lunch and dinner could remain exactly the same as in the metropole:Lunch can be copied exactly from that of France: hors d’oeuvre or eggs, fish with potatoes, vegetables, meat, salad... cheese and fruits... [A] drink is not forbidden after sundown... Dinner will be like a French dinner; dessert will include something sweet, cooked fruit... ice cream... Wines are recommended for the evening... Tea or coffee.46
For items not readily available in the colony, such as sausages, sardines, herrings and olives, the colonial housewives were told to order them directly from the metropole.